Certification

• Course tuition for ISQOLS members is US$ 600 (550 Euros) for those who wish to obtain official course credit and an ISQOLS certificate for having completed the course and passed required exams. Regular tuition is US$ 700 (or 640 Euros) and a discount of $100 (or 92 Euros) will be provided to ISQOLS members.
• Course tuition for non-ISQOLS members who wish to be certified is US$ 700 (or 640 Euros) for those who wish to obtain official course credit and an ISQOLS certificate for having completed the course and passed required exams.

Audit

• One can audit this course through Springer’s iVersity Program. This is a self-paced course with access to all lecture and video material. No exams are required. Course participants will receive a certificate of participation upon course completion. Certificate of participation is not an ISQOLS certification of competency because ISQOLS certification option (see above) involves a high level of interaction with the instructor with exams and student feedback. Course tuition for the audit option is US$ 217 (or 199 Euros). To preview the audit course go to https://iversity.org/en/courses/community-quality-of-life-indicators.

No. However, to make the most out of the material provided in this course, it is recommended that the applicants have at least some background in social sciences and rudimentary knowledge of population statistics.

ISQOLS can provide educational credit in terms of Continuing Education Units (CEUs) for the Community Indicators Projects Certification Program. 1 CEU is equivalent to 10 contact hours. The Community Indicators Projects Certification Program involves an estimated 15 contact hours in total. This translates into 1.5 CEU. As such, the program provides 1.5 CEUs.

Those interested in receiving the CEUs should provide enough information to their own educational institution about the ISQOLS certification program and their own institution would determine if they would accept these CEUs.

Many occupations require CEUs to stay licensed in their profession (planners, pollsters, survey researchers, public administrators, etc.). Those who wish to use the certification program for CEUs in meet continuing education requirements of their profession should contact their state/country licensing board and submit information about the course.

This certification is provided by the International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies (ISQOLS), a global organization with a mission to promote and encourage research in the field of quality-of-life (QOL), happiness, and wellbeing studies. ISQOLS has members all throughout positioned in academic institutions as well as stakeholder groups, and are well-respected for their contributions to QoL. As such, an official certification would be beneficial to anyone who wants to apply the science of wellbeing to guide community indicators projects, academic research projects, policy making, managerial decision-making, population statistics, and/or coaching and counseling.

Some benefits of the certification expressed by our former students include:

• "This certification program has so many impacts, especially in my work field as a psychologist, lecturer, and happiness and wellbeing researcher. I have broadened my knowledge about how to build indicators in quality of life and involved relevant parties in this study. I feel confident that I’ll have a brighter future as a researcher, which is still rare in Indonesia with this certification." - Yufi Adriani
• "This certificate program increased my knowledge particularly in the field of quality of life measuring. Particularly it made me look broader on the different theoretical approaches when considering different quality of life dimensions. My field of research is closely related to such issues as I am doing the analyses of relationships between income inequalities and different dimensions of wellbeing. Because of more skills and knowledge to evaluate quality of life I will be able to do in-depth analysis on the relationships between income inequalities and different dimensions of wellbeing from the perspective of social justice. In this perspective it gives me the possibility to write more advanced papers and publish it in important journals." - Małgorzata Szczepaniak
• "I have attended many conferences, and workshops around the world on QOL. Usually, the sessions or presentations reflect a specific part of the project or outcome. But each of the cases presented in the certification program provided the whole picture from start until end. Each case posed questions of (why?), and (why not). Each case made me go deeper into the (circumstances) and the (realities). The cases presented (hard) realities that copying the best of what other countries or cites have done is not the way. The cases force the (dedicated) analyst to look deeper into the communities with its unique features and settings. I am in charge of the QOL survey in Abu Dhabi, this unique experience gave the in-depth understanding of the whole process. It gave me many ideas that I would implement to enrich my understanding of the whole process." - Masood A. Badri
• "Currently, I am working on a book chapter for the forthcoming Phillips and Trevan Research Handbook for Community Development (Elgar Publishing) writing a case study for a city in the southeastern part of the United States that has a community indicators project. The course allowed me to ask certain questions to professionals and the academic research partner that I might have missed. The certificate has allowed me now to write a case study on this southern city’s program looking critically from both a theoretical and indicators perspective but the value of both subjective and objective validation of what the needs of the community actually are. In my case that I am working on for that handbook, I have found that there was no community validation outside of elites (community leaders, government leaders and the like) to see if the selected indicators actually capture what should be measured." - Patsy Kraeger
• "This program gave me a practical in depth model on how to choose theoretical concepts, how to plan for a quality of life research, the stages involve in planning and validation of data collected. This certification will enable me produce tools for research with confidence and also will enhance my research reporting skills." - Helvecia N. Takwe

The program is self-paced and administered mostly one-on-one through personal communication with the instructor. Course participants are assigned a textbook as a training manual: Sirgy, M. Joseph (2022). Community Quality-of-Life Indicators: A Guide for Community Indicators Projects. Cham: Springer Nature Switzerland. After reading the textbook and interacting with the instructor, the participants are assigned several case studies to analyze (or possible a set of questions to answer related to selected chapters). The instructor then certifies the participants upon successful completion of these case analyses (or answers to the quiz questions).

The principal benefits you will obtain from the certification course are:

• a theoretical foundation to guide the development of community indicators projects;
• knowledge of how to plan a community indicators project;
• knowledge of how to collect and validate data, and insight into how to best utilize primary and secondary data;
• knowledge of how to prepare, promote, and disseminate community indicator report;
• and knowledge of how to stimulate community action and measure the subsequent impact of the community indicators project.

This course is administered by a seasoned QoL scholar, Prof. Dr. M. Joseph (Joe) Sirgy. Students will additionally gain access to lecture slides, videos, the book (training manual), and one-to-one communication with the instructor through e-mail and video conferencing.